Civil society and some members of parliament (MPs) have called for the National Assembly to extend its sitting hours to properly discuss and pass laws.
Parliament passed only the budget bill in 2025.
Currently, the National Assembly sessions run from 14h30 until 17h45, with some MPs saying it’s not enough time to debate items on the order paper of the day.
Institute for Public Policy Research director Graham Hopwood says a government cannot govern if it struggles to pass laws.
“We like the fact that they are looking seriously [at proposed laws] and asking questions.
[But] we need to see more from MPs. This is not good enough.
They need to work harder,” Hopwood said during a presentation on political scenarios in Windhoek yesterday.
Parliament meets three days a week from the end of February to November, with recess in May and July.
This is essentially working 90 days a year, compared to the 250 working days for the rest of the country, Hopwood said.
Hopwood said deadlocks in passing laws in parliament will be an early warning sign for Namibia’s political future over the next five years.
“We can’t pass laws in parliament.
I think this is a really serious problem. A lot of people have said to me, ‘well we don’t really like these laws anyway’, but a government can’t govern unless it can get its laws through,” Hopwood said.
He said Swapo has a majority in parliament and can pass laws without opposition support, adding that the issue begins at the drafting process.
“New laws are drafted at an incredibly slow pace and we obviously don’t have enough capacity.
It’s been staring us in the face for the last decade at least and we haven’t done anything to deal with that,” Hopwood said.
He said it is concerning that after laws are drafted, they sit in parliament for months “without being seriously debated”.
He also said National Assembly speaker Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has a lot of responsibility in managing the parliament’s processes.
“The opposition will say it’s because of electoral competition, but the timetable is set by the speaker,” Hopwood said.
There is space for both increased questions and increased debate on proposed laws, as long as the time that MPs sit is extended, he added.
Hopwood said resolving parliamentary gridlock would be an indicator that Namibia is moving towards democratic deepening and improved policy implementation.
“[In an optimistic scenario] the speaker and party leaders could get together and discuss how to improve [legislative throughput],” Hopwood said.
Implementation of laws is the other issue that Namibia has consistently struggled with.
There are laws that were passed years ago that still have not been implemented, he said.
“I scratch my head at this issue of implementation.
Why would things take this long? It can only be because people are not doing their jobs.”
He said politicians and the entirety of the civil service have become complacent under decades of Swapo rule.
The country lacks good leadership at a management level within the civil service that can implement legislation that has been passed, Hopwood said.
Kuugongelwa-Amadhila did not respond to questions sent to her by the time of publishing.
Popular Democratic Movement leader McHenry Venaani yesterday said his party supports increasing the time parliament sits.
“The question of delays in legislation is a structural delay of agenda items, where we don’t get to reach [debating] bills,” he said.
Venaani said parliamentarians have been calling on the speaker to extend time.
“We only arrive at 14h30 and by 17h40, we need to go home. That’s less than three hours to work. Parliamentarians must sit longer. They should sit until 21h00.”
MPs could sit from Monday to Friday, providing parliament more time to deliberate, he said.
“It’s a structural agenda issue and we’ve been talking to the speaker.
It seems like we are talking against the wall.”
There are only seven bills on the floor of the National Assembly, which is manageable, Venaani said.
“We don’t get to debate them because there is no time.
The problem is the time limitation of parliament. Something must be done,” he said.
A recent motion by Independent Patriots for Change MP John-Louw Mouton proposed extending sittings.
‘POOR LAWS’
Leader of the opposition in parliament, Imms Nashinge, says laws are not passed by the assembly because of the laws themselves.
“The main reason for delay is that the executive routinely tables legislation designed to centralise power and undermine democratic checks and balances,” Nashinge says.
He cites the new petroleum act as a pending law that will reduce transparency and oversight.
“When commentators express frustration over delayed legislation, we must ask: Which specific laws are they demanding we pass? Are they asking us to rush through bad laws simply to boost a statistic? Scrutiny is not gridlock; it is accountability,” he says.
He criticises commentary that calls robust debate “gridlock”, saying such comments come from a misunderstanding of parliamentary procedure and ignorance.
He also questions why there is not more public attention given to motions brought by parliamentarians, as these are “the genesis of legislation”.
‘NO LEADERSHIP’
Political analyst Ndumba Kamwanyah says both the speaker and MPs are responsible for the delays in passing legislation.
“The leadership in parliament is not managing the parliamentary process. Secondly, there is too much debating about procedures. And third, this is the weakest parliament we have seen when it comes to articulating issues.”
Kamwanyah says implementation of laws remains a problem even after they are passed.
“I really think there is no thinking going on at the management level or the implementing level.
They do not have foresight.”
He says a lack of leadership means bills are formulated without thinking through the consequences, and the government is incapable of implementing them once passed.
